Jaylen Brown made franchise history for the Celtics during the month of December. However it was not enough to earn him Eastern Conference Player of the Month honors for December despite a convincing statistical case.
The NBA announced Friday that Knicks guard Jalen Brunson won the award despite Brown besting Brunson in several statistical categories. The Celtics star voiced his displeasure with the snub on Friday.
“No disrespect, no diss to any of those guys,” [Brown said on his Twitch live stream](https://www.twitch.tv/fchwpo). “Shai or Brunson, but neither one of them had a better month than I had. It’s all good. Those are great players. So, my whole thing is, what’s the rubric? What’s the criteria behind?
“Why do they select this? Somebody in the back just picking their favorites? What’s the rubric? Ain’t no rubric. I’ve been telling this to the NBA Players’ Association, and obviously, this is controversial and people keep telling me, ‘Maybe if you get your mouth closed, maybe you’ll win some awards.’ That’s exactly why I’m going to keep talking.”
Brown helped the Celtics put together their best month of the season in December as the team rose to the No. 3 spot in the Eastern Conference with a 9-3 record. Brown played in 10 of those games and averaged 31.7 points per game, tops in the NBA.. He also posted 6.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists, and 1.2 steals. Brown topped Brunson in all those categories besides assists per game (7.1) and also shot better from the field and 3-point range by a significant margin.
Brunson played in more games (13) and helped lead the Knicks to their first NBA Cup victory in December.. It appears that those factors were enough to push the award in Brunson’s favor, preventing Brown from landing that honor for the first time in his career.
Brown did manage to enter the franchise record books in December despite this snub, scoring 30-plus points in nine consecutive games, which matched Larry Bird for the longest streak in team history before it came to an end on Tuesday in Utah. The 29-year-old spoke openly last week about how he’s been enjoying Boston’s surprise success.
“I think this has been my favorite season so far,” Brown said last week. “Being able to get an opportunity to lead a group of guys who, some of us, we have some championship experience, but we have five or six new guys who haven’t really played NBA basketball, and now we look like one of the better teams in the league. That’s a credit to our coaching staff and our leadership.”